March

January

Just click on each layout to view them larger

 

Out with the old, in with the new!

Our landlady’s son, Claudio, brought us this broom recently and told us it is traditional to sweep the entrance to your home on New Year’s Eve to sweep away the last year and welcome the new. There are a few parts of 2013 I’d like to sweep away forever: the death of a fellow Nickel Pilot, “Gaza” Gruenther, and the passing of both of my paternal Grandparents, Bunny and Lefty.

 

We had plenty of fun times as a family in 2013 including tons of skiing, a visit from Steve’s parents, and lots of traveling to include Israel (Steve), California (once just me for my grandpa’s funeral, and the kids and I for most of July), Germany (Spangdahlem, twice to Garmisch, Steve and I to Munich for Bier Rafting, and Steve to Munich for Oktoberfest), Switzerland (skiing in Zermatt), Austria (Salzburg twice, Stubai Galcier for skiing, and Kirchberg in Tirol area for a weeklong ski trip), and of course lots of exploring in Italy: Venice, Pisa, Castelrotto/Dolomites area, Verona twice (once for the Opera and once for wine tasting), nearly a week on the Amalfi Coast, and a week on the island of Sardinia.

Brian will turn 7 in exactly one month. He is doing great in First Grade. He enjoys reading and math and of course recess and PE since he loves to run and play. He’s in his second year of Spanish at school and his first year of Italian and really enjoys learning new languages. At home, his dream day would include building Lego creations and drawing/coloring all day long. He is staying busy with Cub Scouts and played Baseball and Soccer this year. He enjoys skiing as long as the blues are easy (he’s like his mom that way!). He’s laid back and easy going most of the time and really only gets in trouble for pushing his sister’s buttons!

Emily turned 3 in April, with a very no-frills birthday in Zermatt, Switzerland. I didn’t even have room to bring her presents on the trip with us and she never asked for any, she was only concerned that she get cake! This coming year, she will spend her 4th birthday on a cruise to Greece! She’s our little International girl, always singing songs in Italian. She is doing well in Asilo and is learning some of the language. She’s high energy and is passionate about whatever she is feeling. She doesn’t throw fits very often but she is strong willed and clever. She still gets into everything. She’s our kid that we watch to make sure she’s not painting on the walls with glitter glue or cutting her own hair or eating something she found on the ground! She loves intensely though and everyone is her friend (until you get on her bad side, then you are black listed!)

Steve is staying busy with the squadron. He’s a Lt.Col. select and an Assistant Director of Operations. When he’s not working or with the family, and if it’s winter, he’s on the ski slopes. He’s got Brian and I skiing this year, and is working on Emily, who is not quite ready to learn technique but we are just hoping to get her used to the idea, so one day in the future, we will be tearing up the powder as a family. I have future visions of my family fighting over who has to stay behind with slow, old Mom! I’m staying busy with stuff at home, mostly cooking and cleaning and all that jazz. Now that I have most weekday mornings free with both kids in school, I’ve been hitting the gym on base hard and have fallen in love with Spin class.

 

In with the new! We are excited for many things in the upcoming year, which will probably be our last full year in Italy. We are planning out some trips already, including a week long ski trip to Cervinia (the Italian side of the Matterhorn), and a cruise to Greece for Spring Break. Steve will be going TDY to Portugal soon and will pin on Lt.Col. sometime in early summer. We are also hoping for some more visitors! Happy New Years to all of you!

Castagnata a Scuola

Chestnuts at school! Emily’s Asilo (Italian preschool) held a small performance and chestnut festival back in November. The older class of students performed a song and dance, followed by a dance to a fast-paced classical song from the little ones (Emily’s group), where they flapped their arms like little birds, after much encouraging and demonstration from the teachers. Then the whole group sang a cute song about chestnuts together, which Emily will still sing for us when asked. Then we all ate some roasted chestnuts and enjoyed some dessert treats. As far as the Chestnuts themselves, they are huge here in the fall, with many towns in the mountains holding Chestnut festivals to celebrate the nut. Emily will eat anything, so she enjoys a Chestnut here and there, although every time she asked for another, she called it a “Macadamia nut!” Brian does not enjoy any sort of nut, unless it is well-hidden in chocolate, so Chestnuts are a no-go item for him. I struggle somewhere between “I must eat this to set a good example for my children in trying new things” and “I would eat more of these if they were hidden in chocolate!”

 

Emily is doing great in Asilo. Most mornings she goes in willingly and she is always happy and talkative about her day when I pick her up. She has 3 American friends that she sticks to quite a bit, but the Italian kids always offer her a "Ciao, Emily!" She is learning a little Italian and has the accent down. We joke that her language skills consist of about 90% English, 2% Italian, and 8% gibberish with an Italian accent! I asked her a question in English tonight and she answered me with "Si." She knows most of her colors in Italian (English too of course) and can count to ten in Italian. We are loving that she gets to experience the culture through school while we are here! 

Emily and her amica helping to turn the chestnut roaster thingy.

Above: In any playground, Brian can always be found at the very top. Below: sometime that same week, the mountains behind us got their first snow.

The Amalfi Coast {Day 3}

On Day 3, we drove into the town of Amalfi, parked the car and explored a little bit. Then we decided to take the public bus along the Amalfi Coast drive (instead of braving it ourselves). We hopped onboard and headed in the direction of Positano. We were absolutely amazed at the curvy, narrow road and the bus driver’s ability to maneuver a full-size city bus through tight streets and hairpin turns against impatient opposing traffic, all on the face of a sheer cliff. The ride itself was the adventure of the day. When we finally made it to Positano, we took another bus town into the cliff side town and found a cute café for a light lunch. Then we hiked back up to the main road, stopping to take some pictures behind us of the amazing town. We boarded the bus back to Amalfi just as a rainstorm started dumping down on us. The rain was moving towards Amalfi so when we arrived, we stopped in a café for ice cream, did a little Lemoncello shopping and then headed back to our rental house. That night for dinner we drove one town up the cliff and found an unassuming little pizzeria with the best mushroom ravioli I’ve ever had! It was a family-owned little place and the desserts were homemade and insanely good. You just never know when you will surprised by some delicious Italian food! Luckily it happens to us quite often!

The Amalfi Coast {Day 2}

Since Day Two of our trip was supposed to be the last day without rain, we decided it would be our Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii day. We got an early start, hoping to beat the clouds to the summit. But Emily had a car sickness related eruption of her own on our way to the volcano. We did what we could roadside to stop the flow and clean what could be cleaned with a roll of paper towels and some wipes from my purse. Then we found an open (but luckily empty) restaurant where Steve was able to manage a better car cleaning and I was able to wash Emily’s clothes in the restroom sink while she sat in just her rain coat. Luckily, the day was warm and sunny at that point, so Emily wasn’t cold and her clothes dried a little in the sun. We finally made it up the mountain, with no more sickness, and then hiked about 20 minutes up to the crater summit. We didn’t beat the clouds though and we couldn’t even see five feet into the crater. But we were there, so it counts! Brian is obsessed with volcanoes, the reason for this whole trip really, so he was beside himself with joy at actually hiking up to the summit of the infamous Mount Vesuvius! Emily was excited but her excitement was tempered by her nonstop fear that the volcano would erupt with us on it. Steve and I had never summited Mount Vesuvius before so we were happy to bring the kids to hike it, but our happiness was tempered by the vomit soaking into the car seat of our car. 

After we came down from the volcano, we headed south to the ruins of Pompeii, which was buried in ash when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. The town was buried by hot ash and rocks, after the volcano exploded 12-20 miles into the sky. Because it was buried, the town was extremely well-preserved and great example of a town in Roman times. Steve and I visited Pompeii on our Italy trip in 2004 and spent all afternoon there then. We spent 3 hours at Pompeii with the kids on this trip and while seeing a 2,000 year old Roman town is incredibly interesting to us, it kind of went over the kids’ heads. And while they enjoyed climbing around on the ruins, I don’t think they can wrap their brain around how old the town is and how amazing it is to be able to see a Roman town so well preserved. Maybe we can come back when they are older and have read all about it in history class!

The Amalfi Coast {Day 1}

This last weekend was a 3-day holiday weekend for Steve for Veteran’s Day and Brian had 5 days off school, so we decided to waste the days away on the Amalfi Coast. We rented a beautiful apartment in the cliff side village of Furore, situated between Amalfi and Positano. We spent thursday morning packing, loading the car, and then attending Brian’s first parent-teacher conference of 1st grade (rave reviews by the way: he’s smart, nice, and cute). We were finally able to hit the road about noon and it took every second of the daylight hours and into the night to arrive at our weekend getaway at about 830 pm. We grabbed a late dinner at a nice restaurant right next to our rental and then threw ourselves into bed at 11pm. The first full day, the kids were up with the sun, so we all got up and going, and headed into Sorrento, where we immediately caught a ferry to Capri to see the famous blue grotto! Except, it wasn’t meant to be, the Blue Grotto was closed for high tide, which we would have know had we chosen to pre-plan this trip. Opps, lately I’ve been more into a go-with-flow approach to trip planning and this was one time it came back to bite us. But the day was gorgeous and sunny and warm compared to our chilly Northern Italy weather, so we hopped aboard a bus and walking tour of the island. We stopped at many viewpoints for pictures, explored the two towns, Capri and Ana Capri, toured the August Gardens and saw the Fire Cliffs of Capri. Next time, however, we check tide schedules! (Pictures above: our rental in Furore. Below: Sorrento from the ferry and the road in Sorrento down to the marina. The rest of the pictures are on Capri)

Mount Vesuvius from Capri. We would be summiting this the next day at noon!

Prosecco Road

So, another opportunity popped up for a wine tasting bus trip, this time to the Prosecco Road. This area is just west of where we live, Prosecco being the common wine of our region. Prosecco is basically Italy’s answer to Champagne. And since I love a bubbly wine, it’s a favorite of mine. Before this trip, I assumed all Prosecco was the same and I found out I was wrong. There is brut and dry and extra dry and on and on. But I still don’t know the difference. Let’s just say its all good. We were lucky to have a beautiful fall day for our trip and made 3 stops at different wineries along the road and then ended the trip with dinner at an all-you-can-eat Pizzeria.

Emily’s First Day of Asilo

On September 12th, Emily started her first year of Asilo, Italian preschool in San Leonardo, a small town just down the road from us. She ran into the building, hugged every adult she could find, immediately took over the indoor play gym, and seemed completely uninterested in even saying Arrivaderci to me. Emily overheard her teacher and I discussing if I should stay for a few minutes and she joined in the conversation by saying “You can go now Mommy!” Having been excused, I drove the 8 minutes back home and stood inside the house confused and lonely. Not really, I did the dishes and folded some laundry. A short hour and a half later, I was picking her up. She was clearly excited to see me and ran towards me for an embrace, and then she stopped in her tracks, a moment of clarity crossed her face as she realized I was there to take her away from the land of sweet Italian school teachers, outdoor toys, sand tables, finger painting, and friends. She held her hand up in a stop gesture and said “Mommy, go home!” But I know she really meant “Gee, I missed you so much Mom that I could barely function without you, let’s go home and cuddle!” And we did.  

 

Nearly two weeks has passed since her first day and not all of her school days have gone this well. Last week there may have been an incident where she threw a hissy fit and stuck her tongue out at her teacher. And this morning at drop off, she clung to my leg like a spider monkey, shrieking hysterically. She is always happy and excited about her school day when I pick her up so I think she is having fun and she just needs time to adjust to being in school 5 mornings a week. Actually Asilo is full-time, from 9am to 4pm, but right now I’m picking Emily up just after lunch, and we will work our way up to a full day. Although I will probably only send her a full day twice a week or so. We are lucky in that her two teachers speak a little English, so while they mostly speak Italian to her, they can translate for her until she understands more Italian. And it’s wonderful to be able to hear about her day and behavior from the teachers.

Our Neighbor Gina

Meet Gina.

 

Gina lives in the yard of the house that backs up to our landlady’s orchard. We have to walk to the back corner of the lot constantly to throw our food waste in the compost pit. Usually Gina is out there chillin in her yard, sometimes she comes over to see what I’m doing, sometimes she just flicks an ear at me and goes back to eating her grass. The kids and I took to calling her “Dominic the Donkey” after that super annoying Christmas song. Then we discovered “Dominic” was in fact a she. Oh and also, that she’s not a Donkey, but a Mule (half donkey, half horse). So then we took to calling her “Monica the Mule.” One day recently Claudio’s daughter, Sylvia, came to stay in his house for holiday and she brought the kids and I over to the neighbors to meet Gina. Not Dominic. Not Monica. Gina. We fed Gina some bread, took some pictures, and then Gina’s sweet adoptive human parents showed us around their little farm which includes a dozen chickens, 7 or 8 hunting dogs, and a huge room full of mounted antlers. Gina’s Daddy is a hunter and uses Gina to haul his kills out of the mountains. When we left to walk back home, my hands were full with fresh eggs, homemade pasta sauce, tomatoes, basil, and garlic from their garden!

Cliff Diving

One sweltering August day, we joined our friends, the R Family at a little watering hole they had discovered on a nearby river. This particular hole has the perfect set up for cliff diving: an easily climbable rock with sheer cliffs and decently deep (but cold) water below. When we first arrived, we all commented on how we wouldn’t be doing any cliff jumping into water that cold. We had lunch, the kids splashed in the shallow water and took turns pushing each other around in a raft. We were enjoying watching reckless teenagers jumping to impress their friends. Then Steve broke out the liquid courage (Cranberry and Vodka) for him and Casey. A few swigs later, Steve was jumping and cannonballing off the cliff. And even though he was training for a triathlon and didn’t want to risk an injury, Casey was the next one to hurtle himself off a perfectly good cliff into frigid, rock infested waters below (man code dictates that if a man friend jumps off a cliff and lives, you must now jump off the same cliff or forever be remembered as a “wuss”). Next thing I know, Darla is climbing the cliff (sober too!) and jumps. I’m the only one left, so after Steve tackles me into the cold water, I really have no more excuses. So Darla climbed back up with me and we jumped together. Glad to have that checked off my “didn’t really want to do this in the first place but peer pressure is a b#%*@” bucket list.

Top left: Steve. Top right: Steve and Casey. Bottom left, Darla and I. Bottom Right, proof that we lived to swim back to our children. 

Montereale Festival

The Italian culture (and Europe in general) is very social. They spend lots of their free time socializing: families get together to eat and drink, friends and neighbors meet up at church, the open air markets, the town bar. A really fun part of the culture are the town festivals. Each town usually has at least one a year, the larger towns have many festivals a year. Our tiny town of Grizzo has grown into a larger town next to it, Montereale. Steve and I aren’t quite sure where one town ends and one begins, so we think of the whole Grizzo-Montereale area as “our town.” Anyhow, the Montereale part of our town had its annual Court to Court party in August for one whole week. It was sort of like an around-the-world party, having 15 or so different stations set up in the various courts and gardens of the town. Each station carried a different item to eat or drink, from wine to antipasti to main courses to desserts, the idea being you hit up about 5-6 stations to eat a complete meal. Steve went with our Landlady’s son, Claudio, early in the week, so by the time we went as a family, he knew the system and where the beer and wine stops were. We didn’t eat dinner there because the idea of dragging the kids to several stops to make a complete dinner was not one that appealed to us. But we did each get a little something to keep us all happy as we took in the Italian culture in our town. Steve got some beer and wine, Brian and Emily shared a Fanta and some candy, and I found my first real cupcake in Italy! Italians don’t have cupcakes, or even a word that translates to cupcake. I made some cupcakes this last week and we brought one over to Claudia’s daughter, who is staying in his house on holiday for a few weeks. I asked her what a cupcake is called in Italian and she said the closest thing would be to call it a “muffina,” which is just the Italianized version of our English word, muffin. We all know a muffin is not a cupcake and a cupcake is not a muffin! Italians really need to embrace the cupcake. And Americans need to embrace these town festivals! It was so much fun, we went back the next night with some friends and no kids!

Verona and Vino

One weekend after our trip to Verona for the Opera, we were back in the area for a long day trip, without the kids, for some wine tasting in the Valpolicella area of the wine-producing Veneto region of Italy. We had a group of about 30 from our squadron, a bus, 3 winery stops, 1 lunch stop, and a whole lot of fun. The first stop was at Villa Moscani Bertani, a beautiful old villa set in a valley that has been producing wine since Roman times. The picture below is of a fountain on the grounds, fed by a spring, and constructed using stones from Roman ruins found in the area. In fact, part of the Villa built in the 1700s is situated over the site of a Roman settlement. And in the late 1800s, Roman Aqueduct ruins that ran from Villa Mosconi Bertani to the city of Verona were unearthed during the construction of railway lines. The wine, the tour and our guide, one of the Bertani sons, were wonderful. We left with a magnum of Amarone, a wine characteristic of Valpolicella. And also 95 less euro in our pockets. Further down in the pictures is a little cottage on a small lake on the villa grounds, used as a coffee house. Yep, the Bertani Family of the 1700s were rich enough to build a cottage on a lake for the sole purpose of drinking their coffee in. Makes sitting in my sweatpants in my kitchen drinking my cappuccino feel downright trashy. Where oh where is my lakeside coffee cabin?!

Our next stop was the Fratelli Vogadori Winery, also in the Valpolicella Classico area. Fratelli means “brothers” in Italian, because the winery is run by the three Vogadori brothers. They are dedicated to making their wine without chemical treatments and to operating the vineyard with energy conservation in mind. The wine and olive oil produced here was good and we ended up with a few bottles of something or other. All the wine names, grape types, and flavors started running together at this stop, and not just because I had too much to drink, but because my brain just does not remember information about wine. In my mind, there are two types of wine: type one is “oh, me likey!” and type two is “oh, yuck, here Steve, finish this for me!”

Our third and final stop, after lunch, was at the Serego Alighieri winery, also in the Valpolicella area. This winery was started in 1353 by the Dante Alighieri’s son, Pietro. 21 generations later, the estate and house still belong to the direct descendants of Dante. We tasted some more wine here and I was having more of the same problem, too many choices, all tasting slightly different, but very much the same after an entire day of tasting. Luckily, Steve had made some notes and sent me inside to purchase a few bottles of number 2 and number 4. Then the bus made it’s way back to Verona, where we stayed around for dinner with our friends, after which, most of the group headed off to the Opera, and we drove our newly acquired boxes of wine home and into the safety of our wine cellar/basement. Next month we are probably going on another tasting trip to the Prosecco Road area, which I am looking forward to since I’ve never met a bubbly Prosecco I didn’t love at first sip! Cheers!